NorCal L.O.W.F.I

Archive for the ‘Forteana’ Category

July 4^th weekend last found me once again in the southern reaches of the golden state, scouting some venues that will be hosting Gorightly book signings in early August to commemorate the 40^th anniversary of the Manson Family murders with the updated re-issue of The Shadow Over Santa Susana.

Along the way, myself and some friends paid a visit to the Museum of Death in Hollywood to check out their ghoulish exhibits, including a groovy Manson section, as well as a special area dead-icated to the Heaven’s Gate cult, including real memorabilia taken from Marshall Applewhite’s Suicidal Mothership.

Greg Bishop Live At The Museum Of Death! (Photo By Gorightly)

Real Live Mummy-Head At The Museum Of Death! (Photo By Gorightly)

The Museum also has a true Forteana connection of the form of this two-headed turtle which one of the proprietors showed us. However, I don’t think this critter is normally on display. (I forget the turtle’s name, but it’s a she, as I recall.)

Two Headed Turtle (Photo By Gorightly)

As satanic synchronicity would have it, none other than occult film director and Crowley protégé Kenneth Anger had dropped by and was talking business to one of the proprietors in the foyer upon my arrival.

Kenneth Anger As A Young Man

Anger, for those not in the know, weighs heavily in the Manson Family mythos, connected with convicted Manson Family murderer Bobby Beausoleil long before his association with the Mansonoids. In fact, Beausoleil, as well as Anton LaVey of the Church of Satan, appeared in one of Anger’s early films, Invocation of my Demon Brother, with Beausoleil playing the role of Lucifer himself.

Bobby Beausoleil kaleidoscope From "Invocation for my Demon Brother"

Oddly enough, LaVey was associated with Manson Family murderess Susan Atkins prior to her adoption by Charlie’s Family; when Atkins performed in LaVey’s Witches Sabbat Revue in a San Francisco GoGo club in 1966.

Susan Aktins In Anton LaVay's Witches' Sabbath Revue

After the Museum of Death, my posse and I stopped by the LaBianca house, where the second night of the Tate-LaBianca murders occurred in the late evening of August 9, 1969. Although the address has changed over the years, the house itself looks pretty much the same as it did that infamous night, aside from the gate in front, as well as the planter box in the driveway area.

LaBianca House (Photo By Gorightly)

The next photo below is what is known as the Harold True house, located next door to the LaBianca house, where Charlie and his girls attended acid parties and played music upon occasion. By the time the LaBiancas had moved in, Harold True had long moved out, but some researchers still suspect that Manson’s association with Harold True and the LaBianca murders were somehow related.

Harold True House (Photo By Gorightly)

On our return trip to NorCal, we stopped to gas up in Newhall, and I bought my buddy Pete a pack of smokes and some water. As fickle fate would have it, the total came out to $6.66. You just can’t make this stuff up!

This is similar to another 666 anomaly which happened in relation to my recent post on ConspiracyCon 9…number nine, number nine….

Triangle Craft In Front Of Full Moon Over The Skies Of Fresno

http://naturalplane.blogspot.com/2009/07/video-mufon-reported-triangle-ufo.html

Cigar Shaped UFO Over Burnt Tree In Monterey

I usually get down L.A. way 2 or 3 times a year, and when I do I make it a point to visit some of the stranger locales gracing the city of angels and demons. In March of this year, I paid homage to Aleister Crowley disciple, Jack Parsons, with an outing to the fabled Devil’s Gate Dam, located in the town of La Canada.

Devil's Gate Dam (Photo by Gorightly)

Parsons – a rocket scientist and founding member of Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL), and one time head of the California branch of the Agape Lodge of the Ordo Templi Orientalis – practiced magic upon occasion at Devil’s Gate Dam, located a short distance from JPL, where during daylight hours he helped construct rockets that would later land men on the moon.

Parsons at Devil's Gate

JPL seen from Devil's Gate (Photo by Gorightly)

While some might see a dichotomy between Parsons daytime pursuits as contrasted against his nocturnal activities – ritual magic and the world science – there seems to be a common denominator between the two, that of tapping into the generative force of creation. In the realm of physical science, Parsons’ mode of expression was rockets, symbolic of the Freemasonic obelisk, the male member erecting itself toward the stars, reaching out and attempting to the conquer the heavens.

Concurrently, Parsons magical practices revolved around a ritual working, the intent of which was to create a “child” in the spiritual realms, who would be “called down” and directed into the womb of a female volunteer. When born — according to Crowleyean prophecy — this child would incarnate the forces of Babalon, and become the Scarlet Woman of Revelations, symbolizing the dawning of the Age of Horus. To this end, Parsons – in collaboration with L. Ron Hubbard and his soon-to-be-wife Marjorie Cameron – attempted to create (according to legend) what is called a homunculus; an inanimate being that is given life by way of this aforementioned magical ritual.

Marjorie Cameron

As history instructs, Parson’s life ended with a monumental bang when — on June 17, 1952 — he blew himself up while working with powerful explosives. Some have suggested that this explosion was no accident, and that foul play was involved. Other theories contend that Parsons’ was engaged in a homunculus experiment that went haywire and blew up in his face.

http://cbs13.com/local/michael.jackson.tree.2.1072797.html

Where some people find images of the Virgin Mary in a pancake or tree trunk, Tom Waits discovers more sinister or strange images in other similar mundane objects, such as the devil in a shovel, as seen in this youtube vid from the Conan O’Brien Show.

Devil In A Shovel

Waits, it seems, has a knack of discovering these arcane images all around him, as he shared with Dave Letterman a few years back:

Tom Waits On Cribbing

This among, other reasons, qualifies Mr. Waits as a Fortean of the highest order, not to mention of the NorCal variety, as he lives in a small town that lies between Santa Rosa and Bodega Bay. In the new and fine biography on Tom Waits, Lowside of the Road author Barney Hoskyns never once mentions the town in question, so I won’t name it either, as to do so would probably break some sort of spell that Tom has cast over this sleepy NorCal town to keep his privacy sacrosanct. In fact, on the outskirts of said unnamed town, is a bar straight out of an old Tom Waits song called Red’s Recovery Room that is scheduled to be demolished at the end of this month. A closing party is slated for July 11, in fact, and it will be indeed a bleak day for all us who love dive bars and sad cafes.

Waits, it should be noted, was born in Whittier, CA, just as was acclaimed Discordian, Kerry Thornley. Evil Richard Nixon, as well, grew up in that mystical environ, that bore witness to the birth of the Discordian Society in 1957 at the fabled Brunswick Shrine.

As a child in Whittier, Waits went through periods where he suffered a “heightened aural sense”, noting that as he lay in bed at night, even the slightest sound would become a deafening roar. “I’d put my hand on a sheet, ” Waits recalled, ” and it would sound like a plane going by…” This experience scared the crap out of young Tom, who began to suspect that he was going crackers. Later, Waits read how certain artistic people had similar experiences where they experienced periods when “there was a distortion to the world that disturbed them.”

Even though Waits came out of the San Diego folk scene of the late 60’s — then wandered into the rock scene of early 70’s Los Angeles — he was always an artist set apart from the rest of the pack, resonating with the Beats of the 50’s and more inspired by Kerouac or Frank Sinatra than those current trends back then of country rock and cocaine cowboys in the laid back Laurel Canyon scene. Waits, to the contrary, reveled in the skid row side streets of Bukowksi’s L.A. and for a period of time, in the late 70’s, holed up in the infamous Tropicana Hotel, a stay that became legend in the Waits mythos.

Ever the eccentric, a friend claimed he once looked in Waits’ fridge in search of a beer and discovered only “a claw hammer, a small jar of artichoke hearts, an old parking ticket, and a can of roof cement…” In his cluttered room, Waits surrounded himself with beer cans and assorted litter which enclosed an old piano he trucked into the room, a performance from which can be accessed here:

Burma Shave From The Tropicana

Located next to the Tropicana was Duke’s Coffee Shop where Waits  slurped innumerable cups of coffee and dragged from endless cigarettes between eggs and sausage and a side of toast.

Eggs and Sausage

Over at Oregon LOWFI, intrepid Fortean researcher Regan Lee is going chemtrail crazy. And what I found most interesting about her posts was the mention of X’s littering the chemtrail skyway, which is a phenomenon I’ve witnessed a lot in the last few months here at NorCal headquarters in the Central Sierras, although for some reason I’ve have been unable to get any quality pics of said until now, as posted below. My hunch is that these X’s designate something, such as a completed mission, or something to that effect.

When all this talk about chemtrails started a decade ago or so, I basically blew it all off as another paranoid conspiracy. But the more I’ve looked into this whole chemtrail story, the more I suspect that something malicious is indeed going on, be it weather control, people poisoning, whatever the case may be, and now I’m damn near convinced that there is a genuine conspiracy behind it all!

Some interesting chemtrail related links below:

http://www.carnicom.com/contrails.htm

http://www.californiaskywatch.com/

Lovely Lucia

As WFMU’s Irwin Chusid pointed out in Songs in the Key of Z, Neil Armstrong was not the first earthling to stroll the lunar surface. To the contrary, the first feet to navigate that cheesy green orb were none other than those of former NorCal/SoCal denizen, Lucia Pamela, just a few months before Armstrong took one small step for man, an event documented in the 1969 album Into Outer Space with Lucia Pamela.

“It was recorded on Moontown,” Ms. Pamela said of the album. “I was the only one from Earth there.” She also produced a coloring book, Into Outer Space with Lucia Pamela In The Year 2000.

Voted Miss St. Louis of 1926, Lady Pamela enjoyed a career that spanned nine decades, including a stint in Vaudeville with the Ziegfeld Follies where she led an all-gal band named Lucia Pamela and her Musical Pirates, and then later formed a vocal duo with her daughter Georgia known as The Pamela Sisters.

An early photo of Lucia with one of her musical pirates

In the swingin’ 60’s, Lucia’s daughter and former singing partner, now known as Georgia Frontiere, married L.A. Rams owner Carroll Rosenbloom, her sixth husband. When Rosenbloom died in 1972, Georgia inherited the team and later drew the wrath of rabid L.A. fans when she moved the team to St. Louis.

Gorgeous Georgia holding court during her reign as Rams' Queen Bee

During World War II, Lucia Pamela was awarded a Medal of Honor for her wartime service with the USO. Pamela later moved to Fresno, California, where she was renowned for cruising around in her custom Pink Cadillac. There she hosted several early radio and television shows, including “Gal about Town.” Afterwards, Lucia was the manager and host of Storyland Amusement Park, located in Fresno’s Roeding Park, appearing as Mother Goose.

As a wee lad I used to visit Roeding Park’s Storyland and Playland, and those memories still fill me with a sense of magical wonder, with visions of giant mushrooms and Mother Goose serenading me with songs about the man in the moon.

Lucia — who was honored by Ripley’s Believe It or Not for having memorized over 10,000 songs — performed in Las Vegas hotels in the 1980’s. She died in Hollywood on July 25th 2002 at the ripe old age of 98, survived by one son, 12 grandchildren and 27 great-grandchildren. Her daughter Georgia died in 2008.

Currently, there is an unreleased documentary on Pamela’s life, which you can find out more about here:

http://home.iae.nl/users/jada/innerlandscapes/links.html

Lucia Pamela’s obit:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/18/nyregion/lucia-pamela-98-a-musician-to-the-moon.html

Once again I find myself stepping out a bit from my NorCal confines to bring to you a tale about a giant bird who supposedly haunted SoCal in the late 1800’s, until later purportedly relocating to Arizona (another fine LOWFI state) where it was reportedly shot down by a bunch of ranchers.

Purported photo of the “Tombstone” Thunderbird. Too good to be real?

Here is a link about the tale of the Tombstone Thunderbird.

In a recent Arizona LOWFI post our own Thomas Cosgrove explored the myth that might be much more than that!